


burgundy whirlpools

by rowankhanna



Series: Newt and Credence at Christmas [4]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood Drinking, But also a cute vampire, Cuddles, Fluff, He's a vampire what did you expect, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Vampire AU, lots of blood, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 18:13:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9083782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowankhanna/pseuds/rowankhanna
Summary: In which Credence is a vampire, and Newt offers to save him from himself.





	

Blood covers his hands, a thick layer, hot and wet and sticky. His breath comes juddering and shaking, shame arcing up his back like the pain of being struck as he gazes down at the black lagoon reminding him of what he’s done, but even with his sanity returned to him he can’t keep himself from lowering his head and drinking from the ground, his mouth saturated with the taste of metal.

Graves’s hand is firm on his back when he pulls Credence from the ground, the boy’s hands stained and his thin body red, his exposure shining in the wispy cloud-smothered light of the moon. “Alright,” he murmurs, wiping at the boy’s smudged cheeks with his charcoal thumbs, “alright.” Credence feels heavy between his hands, bogged down by the weight of his loathing, and the street snaps shut behind them, unfolding itself into the familiar spread of Graves’s apartment, a slightly shoddy affair two streets away from the Woolworth Building, unclean only from Graves’s sheer lack of care. The white carpet becomes crimson under Credence’s soaked boots, but one lazy swipe of Graves’s wand pulls the unwanted colour out as he guides Credence through to the bathroom to tidy him up. Credence catches sight of himself in the mirror: his eyes are like bottomless, expressionless pools and his face, his pale white skin, is streaked like a pig with blood, his badly cut black hair slicked with it and drawn into matted masses. His breathing quickens in his disbelief, his shuddering, soldering disbelief, as Graves covers the mirror with a white towel, cleaning Credence with a black one, so he doesn’t have to bite back his tears when he sees everything around him washed cardinal.

“We have a visitor coming,” Graves says as he undoes the buttons of Credence’s shirt, no pause for hesitation where Credence finds himself shivering, his scar-riddled chest on display to the world and to a man whose gaze reminds him of a hungry lion. “His name is Newt; he’s British and stopping off here on his way to Arizona. He’s a Magizoologist and he’d be interested in studying you.” A tremor begins to build through his body as he imagines all the kind of unpleasant tests he could be put through, poked and prodded with unforgiving grey instruments, long and short, needles that break his skin and draw pain from all his haemorrhaging nerve endings, setting them on fire. “He’s better-equipped to take care of you than MACUSA are. Or your mother.”

Newt arrives when Credence is tucked, fully naked, in burgundy bath water beginning to swirl into russet. Credence hears him first, bustling, with a softly contained voice that sounds like stepping into the warmth of a home from the biting cold of the New York streets. He hears the clunk of something on the floor, the bidding of greeting between the two men, the swish of fabric, and then Newt is there in the doorway, staring at him, unabashed. Credence wants to hold his gaze, to challenge it, to challenge the probing curiosity he’s always faced with (though he finds himself unable to register it in Newt’s softly drawn together features), but looks away and down into the muddy ripples of the lukewarm water. Newt’s gaze is spellbinding: he looks at Credence like he’s a God, like he’s the most beautiful thing that Newt’s blue eyes have ever had the pleasure of gracing.

“Credence, is it?” He nods. Newt crouches down until they’re level and steps over to the white porcelain of the bath. “The vampire.” He tucks some of Credence’s stray longer hairs behind his ear, the touch brief but poignant, hovering, gentle. “You certainly look the part.” It’s true: he looks like a waxwork, a mannequin, a papier-mâché with leylines of blue and purple veins. “I’m Newt.”

“Hello, Newt,” Credence mumbles shyly, rolling the name over his bruised tongue.

“Mr Graves has told me a lot about you.” Newt sits down, leaning his back against the back of the bath so that he doesn’t disturb Credence, letting him re-catch the breath he didn’t know he’d lost. “I believe I could take you in and that it would be safer for yourself and those about you. I see that you’ve been struggling with controlling your hunger.” He pauses and turns himself around for a moment, swivelling. “You still have a little bit of blood on your face. Do you want me to get that?” Credence nods, watching the look of concentration that crosses his fuzzy features as Newt wipes the last of the blood away with a flannel with curiosity and admiration for the beauty in his cheeks’ flush.

“I hit an artery, Mr Graves said,” Credence says. “It just looked so good and I wasn’t all there until it was over.”

“You blacked out?”

“Yeah.” Newt puts the washed cloth away and sits back down. “I don’t remember anything from any of the occasions where I’ve lost control. Just... waking up, and there being lots and lots of blood.”

“Oh, Credence.” Newt’s eyes are lined with sympathy and the kind of gentleness that Credence has never seen close-up, never seen for his benefit, on his behalf. “Please, I implore you to come and travel with me. I can take care of you. You oughtn’t live like this, in this fear.”

“My – my sister, Modesty. She’d be distraught.”

“Think of the lives you could protect if we had control over the urges.” Credence’s protest was weak, superficial; he loves Modesty and knows she’ll be hurt, but he can see that this could be a way out of the pain and suffering, a way out of coming to in dark alleys covered in the soaking blood of the stranger lying torn apart in front of him, his elongated incisors brushing his bottom lip, his mouth fresh with the stinging taste of iron. “I’m going to go and sit through with Graves for now. Think on my offer. Please.”

“Okay,” whispers Credence, though his mind is already made up. He knows where he wants to be, and where he wants to be away from. Away from this place. Away from his Ma, from the people who stop in the street to spit and call him a freak, away from the alleyways stained in both body and soul, and into the welcoming arms of Newt, a man whose aura alone feels like a warm hug. He’ll miss Graves, the security of his touch, the feel of his lips along Credence’s neck, the certainty of his pendant, of knowing that there is always safety pressed against his collarbone, but he supposes that nobody has told him that he _can’t_ take it with him, even if he knows in his heart that Graves could never appear in the middle of Great Britain the way he appears in the New York streets, a ruggedly prepossessing phantom.

He scrubs at his body, trying to rid himself of his own skin, then towels himself down and puts on some of Graves’s clothes, unable to find his own, obviously cleared away somewhere, or trashed, red beyond repair. He’s a similar height to Graves, but much skinnier so that everything just hangs lazily from his jutting bones, and he feels somehow even more self-conscious than usual when he walks back into the living room, Newt sitting shyly on the sofa with Graves perched precariously on the edge of his armchair, in deep conversation broken by Credence’s entry.

“Credence.” It’s Graves’s voice, cooler and more self-assured. “Sit down.” He takes a seat next to Newt, who has a tentative hand on his battered brown suitcase and casts a smile over to Credence. “I was just telling Newt more about your condition.”

“What is there to know? I drink blood.” Credence speaks quietly, knowing that sarcasm would earn him a beating, and only just managing the words, knowing full well that he’s safe but pressed into himself by warning.

“We think you could be studied,” Newt says encouragingly. “And in a field method. I believe that, if I were to understand your urges and stop them, this information could be used for the greater good and to further understanding within the magical community.” He reaches out to take Credence’s hand, his grip a reassurance. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you, Credence, or to study you in a lab. I just want to help, and to understand.”

They sound like fool’s promises, like sweet lies, but when pouring from Newt’s mouth, from his delicate lips, it’s impossible not to believe them, to hope and to want something new, something better. He presses his bitten-down nails into Newt’s palm, squeezing his hand.

“I’ll do it,” he says. “I’ll go.”

 

Many of his first nights in Newt’s case are novel. He’s afraid of the creatures, of their size, of their mannerisms, and always stands hiding behind Newt, wary, but Newt is welcoming, handing him buckets of feed to pass along when needed. His first blood packet is strange and he spills most of it over himself, so Newt takes to pouring it into cups for him, sometimes finding himself having to hold it for Credence’s shaking, but his patience never wears thin, nor do his smiles, aglow with affection, loving even when staring into Credence’s monstrous eyes.

Credence shakes so hard he spills an entire glass about two weeks into his travels. Newt directs his wand at the floor and says something to it that Credence doesn’t quite catch and it cleans itself, and without a word of complaint he fetches Credence another glass, wiping away the remnants of the last carefully, his eyes meeting Credence’s for only the smallest of moments, the two looking away, startled by the ardency, but even when Newt has cleaned away what he can he stays, hovering over Credence, the space between them small and so noticeable, warm with tension, but of the good kind: not of fear, but of anticipation, joyful anticipation for something he wants, but Newt steps away diffidently, scratching his neck.

Despite the hiccup of closeness or perhaps for it, Newt begins to kiss him: on the forehead, the cheek, not brutishly intimate like Graves. He kisses him when Credence trembles, when he’s overwhelmed, kisses the scars on his palms when they burn until the pain washes away like waves on the ocean. Credence worries that one day Newt might kiss his lips, and he runs his tongue along the spike of his fangs, worrying that he’d bite. Not that he had ever bitten Graves, though Graves had always taken him by surprise, a rush of messy wanting and sweat-slick gasping. Newt is not a surprise: he can always tell what Newt is thinking, his thoughts evident in the shifting of his features.

He comes out of the case for Christmas Day, though there’s not much to see, as the pair are in the midst of travelling. They’re on a boat, a fancier liner than Newt is used to, and they attend a small lunch (at which Credence studiously avoids eating) and look out onto the sea before Credence has to go back inside from dry heaving over the edge of the boat, staring into the white foam of the rushing waters that come crashing into the hull. When he comes back inside and feels less nauseous, Newt gives him cocoa and reads him a letter that came from Graves. It makes Credence blush with its surprisingly amatorial words, his stomach gasping and rolling and tightening with the strength of his own feeling, and also with the startle that comes with the fact that he rejects this, his feelings for Graves a dull memory in his gut. Newt’s eyes are watchful over the parchment of the letter.

He kisses Newt on the mouth. They’re sitting on his bed in the shed and they tangle like knots, limbs intertwining with the grace that comes with shared experience of being outsiders, Newt exhaling praises for Credence’s beauty, for his bravery, for his perseverance, for the sheer fact of his existence, and the poetry makes his spine tingle until his mind wipes itself clean and his mouth is on Newt’s. They both fumble with inexperience, unsure where their lips should go, what they should do. Credence brings his arms around Newt and clings him close, unwilling to let go, while Newt raises his hands to hold Credence’s face, warm against his cold cheeks. The kiss takes Credence’s church upbringing like a thief in the night, his thoughts of betrayal to God saving themselves to hiss at the back of his mind when he lies on the floor (his choice), waiting for sleep to take him. Tears occupy his eyes, lines of soldiers steadily marching on.

“Newt?” he whispers to the air.

“Yes?” it answers in mellifluous tones.

“Have I betrayed the Father?”

Newt rolls onto his side so that he faces Credence, eyes watching from beyond the strands of hair that cloud them. “Personally, I am of the opinion that if there were a Father, he would hardly create you in a way that betrayed him. Would he really make you love only other men if that were wrong? What would be the point in that, in all that suffering? No Father would let that happen.”

He extends out his hand and Credence takes it, comforted by the presence, by the connection. “Even being a vampire? Is it not betrayal to kill others – thou shalt not kill?”

“It’s hardly your fault, to be born that way. Or any way, really.” Newt toys with Credence’s fingers, winding them around his and dancing with them. “The only people you betray, Credence, are those who deserve betrayal.”

“Like Ma?”

Newt breathes. “Like her.”

Credence spends the better part of his Boxing Day with glasses of blood, drinking them like water. Newt has brought him a blood lollipop he found in one of the shed’s drawers, and while it seems a little bit old (he has to blow a layer of dust from its sticky surface), it still tastes in some way good, even to Credence’s peculiar tongue. Newt sits at his desk, quill painting cursive on parchment, deep in the writing of his book, his passion. Credence wonders if he’ll be a part of it, though to his knowledge all they’ve learned is that, with regular blood supplements, he feels no urges and continues to act like a particularly unusual mild-mannered member of society, albeit one whose desires include making love to other men.

“Credence,” Newt says at some point in the afternoon, shifting from his held posture. “How much regular food would you say you can eat?”

“A little. Nothing too heavy. Mostly pastries.” He lifts his head, listening to the scratching of the quill. “Are you putting me in your book?”

“No,” he says. “You’re not a creature. But I’m writing a report back to the Ministry to inform them that vampires, so long as they are provided with appropriate supplements, are not dangerous. In fact, you’re extremely helpful.”

“Helpful?”

“You can lift more feed than I can,” Newt jokes, turning to ruffle Credence’s lengthening hair. “I’m only teasing, of course. You’re worth more than that; so much more.”

“Am I?” Credence looks to his feet, to the tight lacing of his boots, a near-permanent feature of him. “Am I really?”

“Of course you are. I was only speaking in jest.” Newt brushes away some of the stray inky black hairs he’s brought forth. “You’re worth more than the stars in the sky to me.”

“Stop it,” says Credence, voice gaining strength he didn’t know it had. “Stop lying.”

“Why would I lie to you?” Hurt. Credence is good at hurting, though it’s usually with pain that strikes the body, not the mind. He contracts.

“Because everybody does.”

“Oh, Merlin’s beard, Credence! I wouldn’t lie to you. I could never. I just could never.” Newt’s hands are on Credence’s neck, strong enough to mean something but weak enough to allow him to move, to let him escape if he wants to. His eyes are tinged with affliction, but Credence can’t stop himself, the dark in his stomach that possessed him curling up with tendrils that whip like the belt.

“You touch me like he did, and he lied.” He told Credence it would be okay. It never had been, with him.

“I’m not him.”

The tension between them is so palpable that it almost sparks until Credence loosens, the beast collapsing as Newt’s stood ground strikes. He rests his head against Newt’s navel, his fangs touching his bottom lip and scraping open cuts that he knows he deserves for this. “I’m sorry,” he says after a while of having Newt’s hands cupped at the top of his spine. The beast begins to crumble as his tears flow, Newt gently wiping them away without prompt. “You’re not him. You’re everything else. You’re light where he was dark – and where I am, too.”

“I don’t know about that,” Newt says, muffled. That night he invites Credence up from the floor and they cram into the bed together, a symbiosis of warm bodies. Newt looks at Credence’s fangs for a while, running his thumb over the sharp tip with the curiosity of a child in a museum, and he places soft kisses along Credence’s collar and then some on his lips that grow deeper as they understand each other, and Credence even lets himself go enough to halfheartedly chew on Newt, who doesn’t seem to notice or mind, one of his hands tenderly rubbing the small of Credence’s back. With Graves, this would feel dirty, like sin; with Newt, with his half-lidded eyes and caramel highlights and beaming grin, he feels like there’s nowhere else he would rather be and nothing else he would rather be doing.

“Newt?”

“Yes?”

“Will this stop after Christmas?”

“Good heavens, I hope not. Unless you want it to.”

“I don’t.”

“Then it won’t. I’m here to stay. I promise.”

Credence nestles into Newt’s chest, a criss-crossing maze of scars, just like his, and though their sources are different, he feels like they are connected, like the lines could join up and that they could be one, though perhaps they already are, because he can’t tell where he ends and Newt, who is falling into a doze, begins.

He runs his tongue along his fangs, a nervous habit, or perhaps now just a habit. He used to wonder if he would one day be lucky enough to lick and to find nothing there but square-edged keratin, but when he feels the sharpness now, he prays to it like his new Father. He always viewed it as a curse – how could it seem like a blessing in dark alleys where tears would flow in blood and he would sit and marinate in the heat of his own shame? But he sees it now, in the light of the day or the light of Newt’s artificial moon, that he couldn’t have asked for more, for without his fangs, there would be no escape. No Graves, no magic, no creatures, no loving kisses, no Newt; he would still be trapped in the angry mahogany walls of his blustery church.

Now he thanks the angels for his fangs, and for his suffering, because without them, he would not be here, wrapped in the arms of his love, his first Christmas present, truly one from the Father he thought he had betrayed, a gift of heavenly proportions, one that sang like the choirs.

He closes his eyes and cuddles in to Newt’s warmth and he smiles, incisors sitting comfortably behind his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Holy crap, I enjoyed writing this way more than I should've. I hope you guys enjoyed this - it's a little strange, but I really enjoyed writing the building of affection between Newt and Credence and it was super fun. It wasn't very Christmassy, but the good stuff happens at Christmas, so here it is. Thank you for reading!


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